Railcar after railcar traveled across Europe, returning one item after another: the Bruges Madonna back to Belgium, da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine back to Kraków, Holy Roman regalia back to Vienna. Each returned object helped me feel as if I had gotten a piece of myself back, as well—the part of me that had always loved art, not only because of my own search for greater perfection, wholeness, worthiness; but also, simply, because each work was its own story, its own world. These artworks placed no limits on humanity. These artworks only enlarged it.
The Discus Thrower was one of the last pieces to be returned—to Rome, ten years after it had been removed—and is, of course, the reason that I am in Italy now. It is fitting, in a way, that it took so long. One of the first and most ancient masterpieces acquired, one of the last to be returned. Tapped gently back into place like a puzzle piece. Other gaps remain, to be sure, and some masterpieces—and many more people—are lost forever, never to be seen again. But the Discus Thrower was one of the earliest of The Collector’s coveted items. One of the earliest symbols of our questionable intentions.
There is nothing worth recounting about the first part of that trip from Munich to Rome—a few delays, perhaps, and one ancient Perugian woman in the seat opposite me, muttering that at least the trains had run on time before the war. But I knew it wasn’t true. The trains had never run on time, and why should they? Is there something so terrible about the occasional unexpected delay?
I traveled with the repatriated statue, saw it unpacked and documented—all very quietly, and all without incident. Ohne Zwischenfall.
When all was done, the relief was far greater than I had anticipated. The bricks that I had expected to dismantle slowly, one a time—someday, perhaps when I was a wizened old man—came tumbling down, and the sand spilled out. And there were the feelings, and the question. There was the thing inside that I had to do, that I wanted to do.
Clearly, my subconscious had seen this moment coming, as the contents of my suitcase proved. I had packed a little more heavily than I had on this same trip, a decade earlier. Three shirts, instead of two. Better shoes, so that I might blend in with the Italian crowds. A nicer jacket, dark blue instead of brown, suitable for a dinner or a drink with a friend, should the opportunity arise.
CHAPTER 16
1948
Which brings me to this road: long, but perhaps not long enough—could I turn back still? And to this town, just waking from a late-afternoon lull, the autumn sun soft between the trees, soon to drop behind the close-packed stone buildings that wind along the narrow streets.
There are only two cafés, I’ve been told. I wander into the first, dark and sour smelling and unpleasant—the wrong place, I’m immediately certain—and continue down the street, to its more successful competitor, where there is not only the smell of good coffee and warm bread, but the sounds of life.
The cigarette smoke, the tap of glasses on the bar, the sounds of women laughing in a corner and three young boys clamoring for gelato—all of it makes me feel old and foreign and out of place. I tried memorizing something clever to say, but when Rosina comes to take my order, wiping her hands on her apron without looking up, all I can utter is “Fragola”—the word on a label attached to the bin behind the glass. I don’t know if it is strawberry or some other red fruit, and I don’t care.
The three syllables are enough. She catches the accent, stops wiping her hands, and looks up.
“Gelato?”
“Sì. Io voglio . . . Vorrei . . .”
“Fragola?”
“Sì, fragola.”
I sound more infantile than the dirty-kneed boys milling around me. She takes her time with the scoop, pushing it into the soft ice cream. I watch her face, trying to distinguish between anger, fear, or repulsion.
When she comes back, she has relocated her German vocabulary, rusty from a decade of disuse, and delivered brusquely. “Wait for me outside. Five minutes.”
“I’m sorry to bother—”
“Just wait. I have to take care of the other customers and talk to the owner. Go.”
When I try to pay, she waves her hands in frustration.
Outside, I can’t eat the gelato. My stomach is turning.
Five minutes pass as I wait for Rosina outside, then ten, then fifteen.
Perhaps I am remembering things inaccurately, after all. We slept together, certainly, but so what? I can’t quite recall her last private words to me; I remember a promise about something, about singing, I think, but perhaps not. Possibly I have left things out, or added things, or simply made too much of a few days in Italy long, long ago.
I am wondering if I should leave, if I should have never come, when she exits the café, pulling the kerchief off her hair as she walks, shaking out the dark waves.
“First,” she says, standing in front of me without so much as a hello. “Take a look. Tell me what you see.”
“I was only hoping—”
“No, tell me. Inside the café, it was smoky and dark. Here we are in the sun. Tell me a single lie and I won’t talk to you again. Tell me what you see.”
I take a step back and look her over, top to bottom.
“Your hair is turning gray. And I’d say, maybe five more kilos, on the arms and across the middle. But maybe that isn’t from ten years passing. Maybe that’s just from working too close to the gelato.”
She crosses her arms, deciding.
“But you are still beautiful, Rosina. You are still an exceptional woman.”
“I am forty-four years old, you bastard—” and she attacks my chest with both fists, pummeling without vigor. “Why did you have to take so long?”
I hesitate. “Your last words, if I’m not mistaken: ‘Can’t you just leave?’ And: ‘We hate you all.’”
“Hate who?”
“Germans. The Gestapo who came.” It’s difficult to say. “And me. Perhaps not that other Munich lover you had all those years ago, or maybe him, too. I could never be sure. It would be understandable—”
“Oh, liebling. You’re wrong about so many things.”
“Am I?”
“That lover who meant nothing. I mentioned him only because I was flirting and wanted to sound more confident than I felt, so you wouldn’t take advantage. And then I had to flirt even more, so that you would take advantage.” Hands on her hips, shoulders back, she’s on the verge of smiling. But then the light in her eyes dims. “And those last minutes at the graveyard. You’re all wrong.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, trying to reach for her, though she resists at first. “I’m so very sorry.”
She lets me hold her, there on the street, on the pavement, with the dropped gelato in a bright red starburst at our feet. It is the most wonderful thing to feel her crying, her chest heaving and her arms softer than they were ten years ago—not quite her mother, but getting there, and making the most of it, hugging me and hitting me at the same time.
“And what are you doing, coming for gelato? Buy me a drink, figlio di puttana.”
“Must you keep swearing?”
“I get to swear for a day at least. A night and a day, Ernesto,” and she begins to cry again, pushing her balled-up kerchief into her eyes. “Couldn’t you have written to me, at least?”
When I don’t answer, she confesses, “I didn’t remember your last name. I only thought to ask it when my son was seven or eight and started to ask questions—about his uncles, about the farm and the old days—and then it was too late. There was no one to ask.”
“It’s Vogler, by the way.”
“Volger.”
“Almost.” I say it again.
“Did you tell me that, when we first met? I should have remembered. Why couldn’t I remember?”
And I share her worry, that we both had it all wrong, that things didn’t happen quite as we remembered, that we are gambling too much on past events and interpretations.
“Ernesto Vogler,” she repeats, and it thrills me just to hear it transformed b
y her voice, her lips. “Ernst Vogler.”
“Either way. Whatever you prefer.”
She’s gotten control of herself now, eyes dry. “My uncle must have been shocked to see you.”
“He was. He said I’d changed.”
We’ve been holding each other’s hands, there on the street. She takes a step back, studying me as I studied her, without comment, refusing additional assurances.
We cross the street to go to a restaurant she knows, but on the way, we walk past a window and see white tablecloths, and on the wall, a print by Van Gogh—that peculiar man, painter of green skies and blue fields—of sunflowers.
“There,” I say. “This one.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
We enter the restaurant, order wine and dinner, espresso when it seems that we are wrapping it up, and more wine again when we decide to hell with it, there’s no reason a good dinner can’t last three hours or four. I can’t stop staring, except for those brief moments I look down at the tablecloth in order to focus on the sound of her voice, the lilting accent that I could remember even after other details had faded. At the end of the evening, she touches the back of my hand and says, “I should be getting back. He is with a neighbor, she’s very kind, but she’ll be worrying by now. And he’ll be worrying. He’s like that, very protective.”
“I understand.”
“Will you be here tomorrow morning?”
“As long as you’d like me to be here.”
“You’ll find a hotel?”
“Why not?”
“That’s good. It gives me time to think, time to explain.” She pulls a lipstick out of her purse and applies it at the table, trying to remake her face, though by now it is a lost cause—splotchy and puffy—and I don’t mind at all, not how she looks, nor that she has dropped my aching hand. She has been squeezing my knuckles for the last hour, as if she expects me to vanish as soon as she turns her back.
“I named him Enzo,” she says. “I know that is unusual, but I wanted to remember him. I wanted to remember everything. I hope you think it’s all right.”
“But why not ‘Cosimo?’”
“I was saving that for the second boy—which only shows how foolishly optimistic I was.”
“So—things didn’t turn out.”
“What things?”
“With your son’s father, I only meant.”
She stops, and closes the compact. “Ernesto.”
“Yes?”
“Are you paying attention?”
“Completely.”
“You didn’t have an idea, as soon as you talked to Zio Adamo?”
“Idea . . . ?”
She states the facts again, directly, and I am left speechless, as speechless as when I first saw her, bathing nude in the tub, awestruck.
“He is completely normal. Ten fingers, ten toes, nothing extra and nothing forgotten.”
I probably look queasy, but so does she, reacting to my own surprised expression. “Is it all right?”
“It’s better than all right.”
“Are you sure?”
“Certo. It is beautiful and unexpected news, Rosina. It is a gift I don’t deserve.”
“None of us deserve anything,” she says, reaching up to wipe my cheek.
This is what I always expected her to say—that in the light of what happened to Cosimo, and to so many others, too, we do not deserve happiness, perhaps no one does.
“But,” she continues, “we can always hope for more than we deserve.”
I am still absorbing everything she has said when she asks, “Where would we live?”
I hadn’t expected that question, hadn’t expected to come to Italy again and have my life change so suddenly. But that’s the way it happened before; that’s the way it can happen now. Isn’t that why I had come?
“There is Munich, or Florence, if you prefer. Or maybe somewhere far from all of this,” I say. “I don’t know. We can discuss it.”
“I’m not saying it will work. I’m not saying I’ll stay if it doesn’t work, Ernesto.”
“Of course.”
Something new comes into her face. It relaxes slightly, filling with the light of a new confidence. “But it could work, couldn’t it?”
“Yes.” And I have never felt so certain in my life of anything: “Certo. Ja.”
She rests her chin in her palm. “I might want to go somewhere new . . .”
We consider the possibilities that are close at hand, then allow our imaginations to take flight, to new continents where neither of us ever expected to travel, much less settle. Australia. The Americas. She seems open to anything, and that openness confirms what I remember and promises new discoveries to come. I want this conversation never to be finished—not because I dread that shift from perfect stasis to uncertain forward motion, as I once did, but because the conversation alone makes the world seem a better and more promising place than I have let myself believe for so many years.
We have drained our glasses, but continue to grasp the stems as if they are not empty. We are the last people in the restaurant. They have swept it out and stacked the outdoor chairs and removed all the white tablecloths except ours, and the owner is standing in the open doorway, smoking a cigarette, ready to be home himself but willing to give us this final unhurried moment, as if civilization depends on it.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This novel is populated by fictional characters whose lives are shaped by a factual event: the purchase of the ancient Discus Thrower statue by Adolf Hitler in 1938, against the objection of many Italians—a first step in what would become a seven-year looting campaign of Europe’s greatest artistic treasures. I have used some historical details from that ultimately-thwarted Nazi cultural project, while inventing others (including some minor variations in chronology) to suit this novel’s needs. Hitler’s most ambitious plans to collect art for a new museum in Linz, Austria, started taking their clearest shape about one year following the fictionalized storyline in this book. The Discus Thrower was repatriated from Germany to Italy in 1948, ten years after its original purchase; it can now be seen in the National Museum of Rome. For a broader historical context, including the work of America’s “Monuments Men,” who helped track down and protect stolen art during and following World War II, I recommend Rescuing Da Vinci by Robert M. Edsel. Another entertaining book that inspired my (and Ernst Vogler’s) ideas about classical art and body image was Love, Sex and Tragedy: How the Ancient World Shapes Our Lives, by Simon Goldhill. Much of my information about sculpture and historical context comes from trips to Munich and Rome, including visits to the National Museum of Rome and to Munich’s Glyptothek, where the Discus Thrower was on display for one year. (A brief history can be found in an excellent museum guide, Glyptothek, Munich: Masterpieces of Greek and Roman Sculpture, by Raimund Wünsche, translated from the German by Rodney Batstone.) Aside from research, inspiration for this story may have originated with my own hybrid identity: My first name is Greek, my heritage is Italian and German, and I married into a Jewish family. All of those threads shape my interest in 1938 Europe and the strange confluence at that time of influential and sometimes dangerous ideas about classical art, genetics, and politics.
My most sincere gratitude goes to Juliet Grames, my Soho Press editor and a person who won my respect even before this book brought us into closer contact, and thanks to my agent, Gail Hochman, who championed this project and made helpful editorial suggestions, as well as to the many people at Soho Press who shared their time and their talents: Bronwen Hruska, Ailen Lujo, Scott Cain, Anna Bliss, and Michelle Rafferty. The Rasmuson Foundation supported this project with a fellowship, without which I would not have been able to travel to Europe in 2009.
Thanks are due my sisters Honorée and Eliza, practitioners of art and lovers of travel, with whom I should have visited Cold War-era Berlin more than twenty-five years ago, when I had the chance, rather than heading my own way to Barcelo
na. For being a general source of family support extended across many miles, thanks to Nikki and Leona; my mother, Catherine; my mother-in-law, Evelyn; and to all of the extended Lax clan, for ongoing support, as well as to my most trusted first reader, Brian, and my children, Aryeh and Tziporah. I am indebted to Alaska writers Bill Sherwonit, Lee Goodman, Kathleen Tarr, Doug O’Harra, Amanda Coyne, Eowyn Ivey, and the 49 Writers community of writers and readers, for literary advice and camaraderie. Thanks to Amy Bower, my childhood friend and fellow believer in detours and other life adventures; and to Stewart and Karen Ferguson, who have been helpful readers, listeners, and running partners, willing to share ideas and rants while pounding away stress. For assistance with language questions (any remaining errors are mine alone), I thank Charles Beattie, Keith Jensen, Nausicaa Pouscoulous, Filippo Furri, and Henriette Zeidler.
This edition published in Australia in 2012 by Pier 9,
an imprint of Murdoch Books Pty Limited
Published simultaneously as ‘The Detour’ in
the United States in 2012 by Soho Press, Inc.
Murdoch Books Australia
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Text copyright © Andromeda Romano-Lax 2012
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
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